Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 11/22/2021

I appreciate everybody being here this morning. I hope everybody here ‚Äì you and your families have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy that time with your families. It’s a big week for us, obviously there’s a lot on the line for both teams. You win and you keep playing. That’s our objective this week. Hopefully, we can play better than we did last week because we did a lot of good things last week, but ultimately we didn’t do enough to win the game. So, disappointed with that, but looking forward to preparing for a good Florida Atlantic team. As always, they get good athletes, good team speed on both sides of the ball, they’re statistically really good defensively in just about everything they’re doing. Then offensively, they’ve got that University of Miami transfer quarterback that’s had a really good year for them. They’ve got good players, good receivers, the running back can fly ‚Äìa transfer from South Florida, he can roll. So they’ve got good players. They’re really big up front on both sides of the ball, bigger than what they’ve been the last couple years, especially on the defensive line. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Florida Atlantic team as big as they are upfront. Usually, they’re a bit smaller with great speed and quickness. So this is a really big team that we’re playing and they’re good in the kicking game. They do a lot of good things in the kicking game that we’ve got to improve on from where we were last week. Looking forward to it, it’s a big game and we’re excited about it. So, I’ll open it up to you guys.

On the difference in FAU’s play now versus earlier in the season:

I don’t know so much different, they got beat by Western Kentucky last week, who we all know is a very talented team. They got beat in a close game to Old Dominion the week before that and they got beat before that by Marshall, who’s a really good team. So, they’ve lost the last three to some really good football teams. I think that plays a part in it. You never know the health of their team going in, whether they had guys out, or if they didn’t have guys out. But I think the biggest thing is who they’ve played the last three weeks.

On FAU QB N’Kosi Perry:

He’s a lot different than the last two quarterbacks, we’ve faced at FIU and Old Dominion. He can beat you with his feet. He can run, they’ll run quarterback runs with him, he’ll scramble and buy some time and let some things happen down the field. But, he’s a good player. He won some games at the University of Miami, before transferring, he’s a talented kid. He’s got great arm strength, he’s athletic, he’s dangerous ‚Äìhe’s a dangerous quarterback, especially when he gets outside the pocket, now you have to be cognizant of his feet as well as his arm.